1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to operating a virtual object in compounded real space.
2. Description of the Related Art
With regard to operating a virtual object using an operating device capable of six-degree-of-freedom operations, there is a method for aiding operations so that the operations made by the user are those desired by the user, by using limited physical laws. For example, in the event of attempting to move a virtual object placed on a plane in a certain virtual space to a different position on the same plane, instead of moving the virtual object by reflecting the six-degree-of-freedom operations input from the user without change, the virtual object is moved over the two-dimensional plane while imitating gravitational and collision effects, which results in operations more intuitive to the user. Also, with regard to performing rotating operations on the plane, restricting the rotations to those on a single axis wherein a normal vector perpendicular to the plane serves as the axis realizes the operations intended by the user more than simultaneously operating parallel movement components and tri-axial rotations all at the same time. Now, a plane which provides the restrictions on the operations of the virtual object by means of a single plane is referred to as a “constraining plane”, and a collection of constraining planes, configured of multiple planes, is referred to as a “constraining shape”.
Conventionally, the virtual object in the virtual space was modeled beforehand and input, and the model was used as a constraining shape. In the event of realizing this method in virtual space, a virtual object and a constraining shape are represented in a single space, so setting the constraining shape was simple. On the other hand, with realizing a compounded space, precise position of the two spaces, i.e., real space and virtual space, is a crucial element, requiring accurate numerical expression model representations or shape model representations on the real space in order to correlate the constraining shape to the real space. The reason is that the model to be set to the constraining shape cannot be something which the user sets by eye estimation but rather must be a model corresponding to the shape of the real space. In the event that the virtual object is operated using a numerical expression model of a plane not matching a plane in the real space, as the constraining plane, spatial non-continuity between the virtual space and real space occurs, such as the virtual object floating above or moving below the plane in the real space. Upon experiencing such non-continuity, the user will feel that the inability for objects in the real space to affect the virtual object is unnatural, and may not be able to perform intuitive operations. However, precise modeling of constraining shapes in the real space requires that margin of error in the input of geometrically accurate shapes and in the environment to be realized (margin of error in sensor measurement, margin of error with regard to displacement of sensors, etc.) has to be taken into consideration as well, so realization has been difficult.
Thus, there has been the need to prepare precise numerical expression models and shape models beforehand in order to realize the method for aiding operations of virtual objects by affecting objects in real space, and further, this operating method could only be used where models have been prepared.